The Big DumpTruck

Ah, the life of a contractor. Sure, we get paid a decent hourly wage, but we get no sick days or holidays or vacation days. So I don't get paid for yesterday, and I have to work today or I won't get paid for that either.

I'm not really complaining, I'm happy to have a job to go to in the morning. But I miss my old job, where the owner of the company would wander through the building on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and tell everyone they could leave at 2:oopm, and we wouldn't have to step foot back in the building before Monday.

I will say one thing, the commute was fantastic this morning. I just have to time the drive home so I will miss all the mall-aholics heading back after a day of boosting the economy.

I'd like to take a moment to give Amazon.com half a peace sign. Now if you know me at all, you know I love Amazon. I've spent a LOT of money at Amazon over the years. At lunch today I went to their site to place an order for some toys, and was thrilled to see a couple of them were on sale for really good prices. I thought this was great, because I will not be able to go shopping Friday to take advantage of all the big sales because I have to work.

So I pile stuff up in my Amazon basket and go to check out. We're talking like $300 worth of stuff, right? Mostly toys, but at least one DVD. So what pleasant surprise is waiting for me? They've removed the free shipping options. Items that would have had free shipping a couple of days ago now do not, because they are only offering free shipping on toys that are flagged by Toys R Us. Most of the items I am buying do not have this flag. Do you know how much they want to charge me for shipping for my 12 items? Seventy Five Dollars!!!! One item, a Matchbox car set, regularly $39, was on sale for $19. Sweet! But the shipping, if you bought this and only this? Over ten dollars! Ten dollars to ship a Matchbox Set? I want it hand-delivered tomorrow for that price!

So, Amazon and Toys R Us, what I've done is found the same items on other websites for about the same price, but with free shipping on orders over a certain dollar amount (no restrictions). You just lost a three hundred dollar sale because you're trying to take advantage of parents scrambling to "help Santa" by screwing us during this festive holiday season. Thanks for nothing!

Ah, it's that time of year again. Because I don't know if I'll have time to post anything tomorrow, while I'm busy stuffing my face, I'll get my turkey day thanks out of the way ahead of time. Now I know that usually, folks running a site like this go into a long list of things they are thankful for that mirror all the other lists. I am thankful for my health, my family, for the fact that I have a home and a job. Those are the things I'm thankful for in the privacy of my own heart: you're just going to have to trust me on this.

But for you people, you get non-sentimental the official Big DumpTruck List of Thanks:

• The people at Blogger, for continuing to support and enhance this product. Without it, there's no way I'd update as often as I do. Which I'm sure is good and bad for those of you reading.
• My Sidekick 2, without which I'd develop a twitch being away from my email all day.
• People who are so concerned about me that they keep trying to tell me my wife is cheating on me, that I can increase the size of my manhood, and sell me discount drugs. Not to mention fake Rolexes and access to websites with pictures...well, let's just say pictures. Thanks, spammers! And thanks for being so worried that I wasn't getting your mail that you have started bombing the comments here on the Dump. You take time out of your busy schedule to post 25 spam messages a night, which like triples my page hit counts. That's a lot of time you're spending on a site that normally only gets 140 or so hits a day.
• Barilla Pasta. You can't overcook it!

Gosh, I could just go on and on...but I'll end with a thanks to you guys, for continuing to visit even though I have nothing of any importance to say. You are the marshmallows on my sweet potatoes!

Aw man, today was the blood drive at work, and they told me to go away. Apparently it was a bad idea to cough in front of them. Actually, I was a little nervous that if I got on the table, I'd go into my normal reclining position coughing fit. So anyway, I tried, I really did. Unfortunately, it means I didn't get one of the t-shirts they were giving out. [boo-boo face]

So one of you is going to have to go donate blood today in my place. Who will it be?

I'm getting nervous about how little time is left between now and the end of the month. I just broke the 29000 word mark, and I don't know how much more I'll be able to write tonight. Why do I put myself through this?

My cold is a little better but Mr. Dump says I gave it to him, so that's not good.

The comment spammers are back, so I'm trying to keep those edited. Hopefully none of you will comment while I'm in the middle of deleting stuff. I apologize in advance if that happens.

Oh, and we had Junior's teacher meeting tonight. He's doing very well - is in the advanced groups for both Reading and Math. But he's a talker. Now anyone who has ever met this child is just nodding his or her head. Yup. My sister had the best experience with his talking. She rode all the way home from North Conway NH with him the van with her kids, and her kids fell asleep and Junior didn't stop talking the whole way. I was in a different car, and when we arrived at her house, she looked at me with wild eyes and asked (out of his earshot) "Does he ever shut up?" Heh heh heh. Welcome to my world.

I'm up to 27333 words. Not nearly as many as I meant to write over the weekend. I blame this cold-thing. My God, it just clings to you and you can't shake it loose. Just sick enough that doing normal stuff like grocery shopping wipes you out for hours, but not sick enough that you take to your bed for the day. I didn't have the energy to do too much, even though I wanted to. And the cough, it continues. Crab, moan and complain. I know, I know, there are people who have it far worse than me. I do know that, and I'm embarrassed to have taken up valuable air with my meager complaints.

It's the season of the Giving Tree, by the way. You know, where you can select the name of a child and "make Christmas" for them. I usually do this, but this year at work the deadline is a week from Friday, and I'm just not going to have my shopping money lined up by then. So I don't think I'm going to commit to a specific child here at work. On the other hand, I do want to help out, so my other option is to donate gifts to a general collection box. And in this box you can also include items for adults, household appliances, toiletries, and other things so sorely needed by those struggling to get by. I am a big believer in this kind of collection - for several years at my old job I ran a toiletry drive every year. So I do think this is probably what I'm going to donate this year. I am also going to look to my own community instead of the one where I work (no offense, but home is home) and will be gathering items for Ginny's Helping Hand food pantry on Mechanic Street. (I had a URL for her but it doesn't seem to be working. I'll keep trying.)

Okay, now that the DVD drive is working, it was time to go through all the video I shot down at DisneyWorld last month. Man, there was a lot of footage, but now that I'm done with it all, I can't help but smack myself for the stuff I *didn't* tape. I mean, what is my malfunction? Why would I be taping and then stop all of a sudden? Why do I not have more footage of us on rides? I think I was too worried about getting still photos, and there was at least a day if not more that I left all the video camera stuff behind because I just couldn't handle carrying two cameras around. But there's still not excuse for me not getting shots of us on the monorail (duh, we were wearing t-shirts that said "Monorail Breakfast Club" one day), or more of the hotel. Hindsight is 20/20, and every time we go on vacation I get a little better, but still, would it kill me to just shoot a ton of extra stuff so that I can have more to choose from when editing it all together? Grrrr.